* * * * * Every really great painter must have moments when, as he thinks of the days and years spent painting _things_--just things for people to look at and see--he asks himself, “Is it worth while to spend all one’s life painting things one _sees_? Is it not possible to paint the things one _feels_?” * * * * * Sargent is tired of portrait painting--why? Because he longs to do something else. But what he is doing is simply another form of portrait painting--and not so big. He has simply turned from men and women to chairs and tables--so to speak; that is, from portraits of people to pictures of things--all the same art. So far as any one knows he has not tried to make compositions of line and color that would be beautiful in themselves. In short, great painter as he is, he seems to lack the ambition or the inspiration to try to do what Whistler for more than forty years was trying to do--lift painting from the rut of reality to a plane more nearly on a level with that occupied by the greatest masters of China and Japan. * * * * * The following paragraphs from a little book on Cubism by two well known Cubist painters throw some light on the subject: We should be the first to blame those who, to hide their incapacity, should attempt to fabricate puzzles. Systematic obscurity betrays itself by its persistence. Instead of a veil which the mind gradually draws aside as it adventures toward progressive wealth, it is merely a curtain hiding a void. It is not surprising that people ignorant of painting should not spontaneously share our assurance; but nothing is more absurd than that they should be irritated thereby. Must the painter, to please them, turn back in his work, restore things to the commonplace appearance from which it is his mission to deliver them? From the fact that the object is truly transubstantiated, so that the most accustomed eye has some difficulty in discovering it, a great charm results. The picture which only surrenders itself slowly seems always to wait until we interrogate it, as though it reserved an infinity of replies to an infinity of questions.[44] By way of comment on this paragraph: Why should we deny to painting one of the greatest charms of poetry--_elusiveness_? Great poetry is _rarely_ superficially plain to the casual reader. Great music is _never_ superficially plain to the casual hearer. But the attitude of the public is that great painting shall always be superficially plain to the casual observer. A painter may paint things every one understands at a glance, but is it not his _right_, if he wishes, to paint things no one understands but himself?